Tag Archives | Germany

The young man who became world famous as the “Forest Boy” when he claimed he had lived feral in German woods for five years – agreed to carry out 150 hours of community service on Thursday after admitting making it all up. Berlin authorities charged him with fraud after spending €30,000 looking after him before his identity and age were revealed.

“Ray” became a global story in September 2011 after turning up at Berlin’s city hall and asking for help. He told astounded officials he had been living in the woods for five years with his father, sleeping in huts and living off the land. He said he no longer knew who he was nor where he was from – and that after his father died in a fall.

“Ray” stuck to his story for months and even attracted the attention of one couple who said he was their long lost son.

Spiegel reports that German families can now opt out of gender (as a legal category) for their children:

Germany is set to become the first country in Europe to introduce a third, “indeterminate” gender designation on birth certificates.

The option of selecting “blank,” in addition to the standard choices of “male” or female” on birth certificates will become available in Germany from November 1. The legislative change allows parents to opt out of determining their baby’s gender, thereby allowing those born with characteristics of both sexes to choose whether to become male or female in later life. Under the new law, individuals can also opt to remain outside the gender binary altogether.

The law passed just six weeks after Australia became the first country in the world to introduce legal guidelines on gender recognition…individuals can select the third category irrespective of whether or not they have undergone sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy.

Germany’s national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the amount of graffiti being sprayed on its property.

The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night. The drones would have infra-red sensors sophisticated enough for people to be identified, providing key evidence.

German media report that each drone will cost about 60,000 euros and fly almost silently, up to 495ft above ground. A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon.

It is not yet clear how Germany’s strict anti-surveillance laws might affect their use. Using cameras to film people surreptitiously is a sensitive issue in Germany, where privacy is very highly valued.

So claims an article in the country’s paper of record. The point is that fighting a war on drugs will become increasingly surreal as the ways in which people get high multiply. From Der Spiegel:

“Toad-licking, that’s the latest thing,” says Willi Stier, a police officer from Mannheim. He points to a photo of the toad he’s referring to, a stocky creature from America that can be ordered online.

The toad has glands that can be induced to secrete a psychoactive substance with squeezing. Young people pass the animals around at parties like joints. “Get high, have fun,” says the police officer.

Stier says that some 80 to 90 new drugs have spread in recent years. He believes that 28 new substances were classified under Germany’s narcotics law over the last year, but there are more than that. “Drug users look for alternative products or modify the recipes, keeping themselves a step ahead of lawmakers,” says Stier.

An Amazon spokeswoman in Germany, Ulrike Stoecker, said Monday the online retailer has ended its relationship with Hensel European Security Services “with immediate effect.”

A documentary shown on ARD public television last week showed staff of the security company – whose initials spell out the name of Adolf Hitler’s deputy Hess – wearing clothes linked to Germany’s neo-Nazi scene. It interviewed people claiming they were mistreated by the staff.

Stoecker told The Associated Press that Amazon has a “zero tolerance limit for discrimination and intimidation and expects the same of other companies it works with.”

Amazon is at the center of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers.

Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe working at its German packing and distribution centers. ARD’s film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms and boots with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the program-makers said.

ARD said Amazon’s temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company’s logistics centers in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometers per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon.

A building in the leafy suburbs of Berlin has been dubbed the house of doom after it emerged that nine people died unnatural deaths there in the last 15 years.

Built just 25 years ago in the Gatow district of Spandau, the large house has been home to a brothel owner who ended up decapitated while flying down the nearby Autobahn on his motorbike in 2003, the suicide pact of a British journalist and his lover, and the murder-suicide of an entire family. The most recent was scientist Lorin W., died in a car crash.

In summer 2012 Berlin police were called to the building’s maisonette apartment, where they found the bodies of 69-year-old Kristian B., his wife Kathrin, 28, and their two sons aged six and three. The debt-riddled asset consultant had suffocated them all before killing himself with a plastic bag.

As a youth in a ski mask marches down a Berlin U-Bahn train, dressed head-to-toe in black, commuters may feel their only protection is the ceiling-mounted CCTV camera nearby. But he is not interested in stealing wallets or iPhones – he is after the camera itself. This is Camover, a new game being played across Berlin, which sees participants trashing cameras in protest against the rise in close-circuit television across Germany.

The game is real-life Grand Theft Auto for those tired of being watched by the authorities in Berlin; points are awarded for the number of cameras destroyed and bonus scores are given for particularly imaginative modes of destruction. Axes, ropes and pitchforks are all encouraged.

The rules of Camover are simple: mobilise a crew and think of a name that starts with “command”, “brigade” or “cell”, followed by the moniker of a historical figure (Van der Lubbe, a Dutch bricklayer convicted of setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933, is one name being used).

In the near future, in certain regions of the world, denying someone internet will be considered a barbaric, criminal act. Computer World UK reports:

Internet access is crucial to everyday life and the loss of connectivity is deserving of financial compensation, the German Federal Court of Justice has ruled. Because having an internet connection is so significant for a large part of the German population, a customer whose service provider failed to provide connectivity between December 2008 and February 2009 is entitled to compensation.

The plaintiff was erroneously disconnected and demanded that the unnamed telecommunications company pay for costs that incurred in switching to a new provider. The plaintiff also demanded compensation of €50 per day for the period his was unable to use his DSL service.

The German government plans to ban zoophilia — sex with animals — as part of an amendment to the country’s animal protection law, but faces a backlash from the country’s zoophile community, estimated to number over 100,000. They say there’s nothing wrong with consensual sex and that the true violations of animal rights are taking place in the farming industry.

Zoophilia was legalized in Germany in 1969 and animal protection groups have been lobbying for a ban in a campaign that has been fuelled by heated debate in Internet forums in recent years. In the future, having sex with an animal could be punished with a fine of up to €25,000 ($32,400).

“We will take legal action against this,” Michael Kiok, chairman of zoophile pressure group ZETA (Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information), told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification.